The Mustafar scene could have been omitted, but I think that Vader's appearance towards the end contributed to the story as it really helps to tie Rogue One into A New Hope and suddenly the opening scene of ANH with Vader's Star Destroyer chasing Leia's Corellian Corvette feels more intense. Vader's appearance in R1 was certainly nothing like Jar Jar Binks' appearance in The Phantom Menace where it took up a notable amount of screen time across multiple scenes and ultimately contributed nothing to the overall plot.

As for the tightness of the space battles -- look, a LOT of things in Star Wars is scientifically inaccurate. This includes:[list]The tightness of an asteroid belt. IRL asteroids are actually thousands of km apart.

A smooth rolling ball of a droid like BB8 would have skidded uncontrollably on sand.

A hollow planet like Naboo being able to form, let alone having sufficient/stable gravity

No sound in space

A parsec is a measure of distance, not time. 1 parsec = 3.26 light years.

Blaster bolts (particle beams); most Star Wars movies and other canonical material accurately show blaster bolts not drawing blood. Real life experiments indicate that this might be true if a particle were ever used to shoot a living target, as these pulses are so powerful that they instantly ionise atoms on contact. However, in The Force Awakens, blaster bolts were shown to cause bleeding. Although it may be due to the rupturing of internal organs beyond the point of impact?

Starkiller Base: sucking all of the energy of a star into a planet would vapourise that planet.

Flight dynamics: Star Wars spaceships and fighters fly like fixed-wing aircraft do in atmosphere, such as banking into turns. Spacecraft never need to do this since they do not rely on air pressure to fly.

The destruction of the Second Death Star would have been catastrophic for Endor. The sheer level of radiation from the explosion of the Death Star's thermonuclear reactor would have destroyed everything and everyone on the surface of Endor facing the Death Star. And anyone who may have been lucky to survive that would probably be killed by the massive chunks of falling debris from the Death Star, hurtling towards the moon's surface at 355,000km/h, hitting with nearly quadruple the amount of force as the asteroid that wiped out the dinosaurs.

Hyperspace. Let's not even go into the extremely complicated science of faster-than-light speed, but suffice to say that its portrayal in Star Wars isn't the most realistic. George Lucas even admits this and says that Hyperspace in Star Wars is nothing more than a plot device because he needed a way to get his characters from one end of the galaxy to the other without taking hundreds or thousands of years

It's highly unlikely that so many diverse alien races can all happen to survive in an Earth-like atmosphere/planet. They would more likely be like Plo Koon, requiring a device that allows them to breathe in what they consider to be alien atmospheric conditions. Although a LOT of scifi stories do this, not just Star Wars.

One word: Midichlorians.

Light sabres. Again, I won't bore you with an essay on how impossible this is, but again Lucas explained that this was another plot device because he wanted his main characters to have a close-up interpersonal melee weapon rather than guns. He of course created the Force to explain why light sabre users could survive in a universe where people used blaster guns.

BUT at the end of the day, it doesn't matter. Because Star Wars isn't meant to be science fiction, it's really a fantasy story set in space. It's similar to say Greek/Roman myths or The Lord of the Rings, but the difference is that it has a futuristic space setting rather than an ancient historical setting.

Still rocking the DVD's there Gok?, and shouldn't that be a new hope not empire?

In my defence I've been sick all week and sleep deprived. Noone else has picked it up though, so a coveted No-Prize for you!

Quote:

Originally Posted by Meister

Now on a serious note, honestly, how many times did you repeat that last scene when you finally whacked it on at home?

Not yet, although there are videos on YouTube which stitch the ending of Rogue One in with the opening of A New Hope. Better than switching DVDs as there's no lag. Although the earlier vids showed the Darth Vader fight up to the capture of Princess Leia... the videos I'm finding now are showing less and those previous ones have been removed. I suspect that it may be for legal reasons now that the home video versions are out.

P.S.: I've watched this film twice since I bought it. Once yesterday (since I was sick at home). I was still sick at home today but was working from home but I watched it again w/ my daughter after dinner. The good thing for her now is that she can ask me all the questions that she wanted to ask before when she saw it in the cinema but couldn't because she knows better than to talk during a film at the movies (unlike some grown adults ). She's now worked out why all of the Rogue One characters had to die as she said to me, 「だから後で見えない・・・」("That's why you don't see them later.") Yep.

This is girl's reaction to the end of Rogue One is awesome. Forget the critics and haters and everything else, these movies are meant to be enjoyed and the sheer genuine enjoyment this girl gets from this scene is so beautiful.